


Strangepole Manor

by ConvenientAlias



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Domestic, F/F, Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-25
Updated: 2019-09-25
Packaged: 2020-10-28 09:44:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20776520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConvenientAlias/pseuds/ConvenientAlias
Summary: Emma and Arabella escape Lost Hope, but end up stranded elsewhere in Faerie.





	Strangepole Manor

Lost Hope is engulfed in a whirlwind. The floor is tilting. Stephen clutches the Gentleman’s shoulder and looks at him with an expression of death. The tree in the center of the ballroom is thrashing its branches, heaving at the root. Emma grabs Arabella’s hand and they run out of the ballroom and then out of the entire hall. Outside the air is cold and misty, and the landscape is all trees with dark, uniform trunks and high branches. They run and they run and they run until they can run no more. Emma isn’t sure whether they’ve run ludicrously far (they didn’t see anyone coming after them, after all) or not far enough, because magic can chase them anywhere.

Arabella collapses on a bed of moss. “Where are we?” she says. She is more upset than Emma has ever seen her before, no longer either the calm lady of London or the bewitched woman of the Gentleman’s balls. Now her voice is straining at the edges, a hairsbreadth away from falling apart.

“I don’t know,” Emma says. “He never let me into the forest on my own.” Then she sees the depth of Arabella’s confusion and realizes she’s not just bewildered by the forest but by everything. She’s just woken up out of the enchantment; everything about this land is strange to her.

Emma puts a hand on her back. “We are in Faerie, though. So we must be very careful, and try our best to find a way out. I don’t think we should return to Lost Hope; we don’t know what happened there, and I can’t bear for us to fall into the Gentleman’s hands again.”

Arabella agrees, though she is worried about her husband and Stephen. For now they must keep themselves safe. And they are very tired. So they pick up some fallen branches and build a small lean-to to cover them for the night.

* * *

In the morning, everything is strange.

They are no longer in a lean-to. The ground beneath them is still moss, but the branches they leaned against the tree to cover their heads have warped shape, expanded, shifted. Now the small lean-to has become a modest-sized cabin, the type which would have taken them at least a month to build. It has a door made of pine, and a window in each wall with real paned glass. The tree they leaned the branches against the night before grows in the center of the hut. It reminds Emma of the tree at the center of Lost Hope. She shivers.

“Is this common in Faerie?” Arabella asks her, after they have explored the house’s nooks and crannies. There is no furniture, at least, but the walls are very strong and well-crafted.

Emma says brusquely, “How should I know? All I’ve ever done in Faerie is dance.”

“Oh.” Arabella digests the answer. “…if you are free to talk about your time in Faerie now, I’d like to hear about it. I always used to worry about you so much, and I did not understand what you were going through. But now you could tell me anything.”

Emma tells her some things, anyway. Stories of her first encounters with the Gentleman, of the dances she has attended, some orderly and some wild, of the things she saw the Gentleman do. Even if she censors some of the horrors she witnessed, so many of her stories come out as cautionary tales.

But as they talk, they cautiously look around the area of the forest they are in. They’ve lost any kind of path, so they are careful to keep the cabin within seeing distance. (They’re not sure it’s safe, but Arabella says it feels like home, and Emma accepts that Arabella usually has good instincts.)

They find a suspiciously convenient apple tree. But they are both very hungry, and they’ve eaten plenty of fae food before, so they bring some of the apples back to the cabin. When they go inside, the cabin has changed again. Now there is a table in the middle of it, and on the table is a loaf of bread.

Arabella is confused. Emma gives the table a very weary look. The cabin, with neither mouth nor eyes, seems to somehow beam back at them.

“Well,” Arabella says. “I suppose we might as well eat it.”

Emma sighs, rips off a chunk of the bread, and stuffs it in her mouth.

* * *

Over the next couple days, they explore the area a little more thoroughly. They make trails of stones or sticks back to the cabin, having little confidence that the geography around them won’t change. However, it remains mostly stable, though the positions of the trees do switch from time to time. They find fruit sometimes, and nuts and mushrooms. But the cabin almost seems to resent these offerings of the forest, producing more food every night. It also grows plates, dishes, cups, utensils, a small fireplace, two chairs for the table, and a rocking chair.

“You know,” Arabella says to one of the walls, “much as we appreciate it, you really don’t need to.”

Emma rocks furiously in the rocking chair. “It’s typical Faerie activity. They never know any limits. What’s strange to us is natural to them. Nor do they have any human standards.” She glares at the cabin door. “If this house really wanted to help us, it would help us get home.”

The cabin creaks sadly, and Arabella pats Emma’s arm, but Emma throws her off and stalks outside. She walks through the forest, almost trying to lose herself. But the cabin is still there when she gets back.

Apparently they have become a stable landmark.

Apparently this is enough to attract some attention.

For, when they have been in the cabin for a little more than a week, faeries begin showing up at their door. Not more than one every couple days, perhaps, but enough to put them both on edge. Some appear almost human—ragtag beggars and children with faux-angelic smiles, graceful nobles in velvet and jewels. Others are obviously other, with too many eyes and fingers, hair that appears to be made out of bark or metal, or animal features where human ones ought to be, crocodile snouts and rabbit ears. Arabella and Emma are polite to all of them, and politely send them on their way without inviting them in.

Then one day a polite fae courtier shows up with an invitation from the Faerie King to a ball at “Hope Renewed”, which has to be a new and fancy name for Lost Hope.

“Someone’s taken over from the Gentleman With Thistledown Hair,” Emma says. “He’d never change the name himself.”

“Still, it seems unwise to go,” Arabella says.

“Not to go would be rudeness. It’s a faerie’s right to seek vengeance on someone who has offered offense. No, we must go.” Emma’s fists clench. “But we will have to be very, very careful. Otherwise, we really will be trapped here forever.”

She’s tense all day, and tenser when they set out the next day to attend the ball, in gowns the cabin has helpfully provided. (Of course it would want them to please the new king. Emma wants to be angry at it, but wonders instead whether they will even come back, and whether, abandoned, it would be lonely.) She walks with a stiff stride and a stiffer jaw, and Arabella walks slowly behind her.

She walks so slowly that she falls behind, and Emma is forced to stop. “Arabella, if you don’t hurry we’ll be late, and that’s rudeness as well.”

“Surely we don’t have to attend,” Arabella says, although they have already been walking for almost an hour. “Surely…”

And it is then that Emma realizes Arabella is afraid as well.

“Do you remember much of the Gentleman’s balls?” she asks, sitting down for the moment.

“Mostly just dancing,” Arabella says quietly, “and dancing, and dancing, and dancing… and I loved it, and was never bored. I’m sure my feet would be glad to join again.”

Emma cups Arabella’s cheek. “Whoever this new king is, I will not let him have you. That is a promise.”

Arabella swallows. “My husband did not willingly let me go either, yet I was taken all the same.”

There is little Emma can say to that. But she holds Arabella’s hand, and they continue to walk toward Hope Renewed.

* * *

Hope Renewed is in some ways unlike Lost Hope. The colors of the wall and floor have changed, and the tree in the middle has grown larger than ever. And the people in the hall are wearing different clothes and acting a little more… human, perhaps is the word for it. They have not started dancing yet when Emma and Arabella come in.

Still, the tension does not ease in Emma’s chest until the new king enters the hall, and she sees that it is none other than

“Stephen!” she cries out, and she runs and embraces him. He pats her back awkwardly, and after a moment she realizes he is not hugging her back and steps away.

He does not look quite himself. His eyes have changed color. Also, he is smiling. This is perhaps a good thing, but it is still strange. Stephen is such a solemn man.

“Welcome,” he says, “to Hope Renewed. I have refurbished it as the first part of my efforts to renew this kingdom, and bring about important reforms. Lady Pole, Lady Strange, you are both invited to my first ball as king. I was quite surprised to hear you had set up residence in the East-West-North-South Strangepole Manor in the forest.”

“We’re just in a cabin,” Arabella says.

“A new manor. It is good. My kingdom should have growth, should it not? New ladies, and a new house of the fae. Welcome to the ball.”

The dancing is not so wild as at Lost Hope. It is a bit slower, and it stops sometimes for people to talk and to eat the food offered. Emma talks to Stephen for a while about his defeat of the Gentleman and his plans for the country, and they are all very promising. Still, she is not sorry when she and Arabella can leave. The hall is changed, but it is stil the place where they were both held prisoner once, and she cannot feel comfortable within its walls, dancing on that too familiar dance floor.

* * *

They are tired when they get home, and the cabin must know it, for it has at last gathered all its strength to offer them a bed, one with a canopy and curtains and a luxurious mattress and blankets. They sink into it as soon as they can take off their ballgowns and change into lighter clothing, better suited for sleeping.

“I can sleep now,” Emma says to Arabella. “It was not the first thing I noticed after we escaped, but it is truly amazing, is it not? I used to come here in my dreams, so it was not true sleep. But now I live here waking, and my dreams are quiet.”

Arabella is also quiet. She wraps her arms around Emma and says, after a while, “It was good to see Stephen again.”

“Yes, I agree. Stephen.”

“I remember he did not like the Gentleman much either, though he served him. At those wild balls, he always looked less happy than the rest.”

“And now he is happy.”

“Yes. He will be a good king. Do you suppose we will be here to see his rule?”

“I don’t know.” Emma has almost accepted they may never leave here. And what is there for her in England if they were to escape? All England thought her mad and rejected her and shut her away. Is she to miss a place that was once her prison as much as Lost Hope was?

But Arabella must still want to leave. She had many friends in England, and she was a respected woman. The faeries say her husband has vanished from both realms, but still, there must be many reasons Arabella would want to return.

But when Arabella speaks again, it is not of the future, but of the past. “I remembered other things, on the dance floor today. I remembered we used to dance together, sometimes.”

“The Gentleman With Thistledown Hair used to like to see it.”

“Yes, it pleased him. But I remember you tried to keep an eye on me, and keep me away from him. You tried to protect me.”

“I tried.”

“And then you saved me.” Arabella snuggles up against Emma, and sighs against her neck. “My dear friend, what would I ever do without you?”

“You saved me, too, in all those times when I had no friend but you. You were all that kept me going, sometimes.” Emma kisses Arabella’s cheek. “I love you.”

“And I you, my dear. Thank heavens we are together.”

The cabin walls creak. They sound like they approve.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written for a Sapphic September prompt of "Emma/Arabella: They escape Lost Hope, but to somewhere else in Fairyland." Lots of fun :)


End file.
